Tag Archives: Nemo,

My Nemo’s muzzle is gone nearly all silver. He was right up near the pillow when I took this picture and I am surprised it came out in focus. He usually makes the effort to sneak up next to me not so much to cuddle the way Rico does, but because he wants something he doesn’t have thumbs to get. Dogs have no guile.

The big guy is five and a half years old now. I still remember the day he was born, when the Puppy Fairy delivered nine puppies to Daisy, the pregnant dog I had rescued from the neighbor next door. We won’t go there right now. This is about happy stuff and we did find a good home for Daisy.

Nemo grew up with not one, but two nanny dogs, the first being Emily the Great Pyrenees who passed away when Nemo was just six months old and the second being Sadie, the Yellow Lab who just recently passed away. He has lived with cats and chickens his entire life as well as with Sparky, his elder dog brother by two years. Nemo’s younger dog brother would be Rico, who is just over three years old. Phoofie has been a mainstay and nemesis for Nemo’s entire life so far. Of course, at eleven years old, the cat pretty much just naps all day and ignores the dogs anyway.

When I got sick last year, the lying around staring at the ceiling activity level I have had makes me appreciate that my dogs are here providing in-home dog therapy the way they do. When I get my hair to grow back, I’m not even going to complain about it being all grey any more. At this point, I will be satisfied to simply have hair.

My shiny, black puppy has grown to 140lbs at his heaviest, 125lbs when he’s at his best weight, and has acquired quite a few silver threads on his schnozzola. Grey hairs signify life lived, history made, time spent. Nobody will ever love you the way your dog does.

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Dunedin, FL – It’s full moon, folks, and dogs all around the world are in full-tilt shredder mode. Earlier today, a one-year old Labrador Retriever named Kay in Northumbria was caught mercilessly shredding one of her birthday presents.

This outrageous crime spree by guilty Labs has been getting worse. In just this past week, a three-year old Black Lab named Ruby was caught stealing a taxidermy possum during an educational presentation in a public park Down Under. The suspect in that case was incarcerated and later sent to rehab for retraining.

Closer to home, we have similar, tragic news to share: the famous Stinky Dog blanket, beloved comforter of wet and stinky dogs banned from the interior of the home until such time as they were acceptably dry, has met an untimely end late this evening.

The suspect, one-year old Rico, was caught with poly stuffing dangling from his mouth when BigBlackDogStudio’s resident artist happened to turn around and caught the canine destroyer in the act. The artist became suspicious when all of a sudden, she realised that the studio was eerily quiet and that the sounds of various plastic water bottles being chewed only moments before had suddenly ceased.

When confronted by the artist about the blanket-shredding incident, the suspect cocked his head sideways and pretended not to understand the question. The suspect was thereafter taken into custody and confined indoors while the evidence was gathered into a large garbage bag. Charges are pending.

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When we stopped at the gallery today, Himself got bored and began wiggling around on the rug. The stretched out photo is my favourite. Only one of his gyration shots came out in focus, which is normal for him. ❤ my dog!

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While in the thrift store the other day looking for a wooden chair to paint and donate for a “chair”-ity auction upcoming, I was thumbing through picture frames to find any that I could use. I came across a frame with its three pictures of a Black Lab and his human. At home, I took off the back to see if there was any writing on the backs of the pictures as to when they were taken or what the dog’s name is but found nothing.

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What strikes me about the framed dog is not that it’s a Black Lab or that it appears to be a hunting dog as well as the dog in his younger days as well as old. What struck me is that someone must have passed away nearby here, the family came in and cleaned out his stuff, and then donated all the stuff they didn’t want to keep to the thrift store, which is something typically done and not strange in and of itself.

What bothers me is that the dog was obviously important to the hunter to have his favourite dog hung so nicely on his wall. The framing might have been a gift given that way to him. But the family didn’t bother taking out the pictures to keep in a photo album of the deceased with his beloved dog and donating just an empty frame; instead, they just packed up someone else’s fond memories, personal photos and all, and left them at the good-will. Why? Because it’s just Grandpa’s old dog that probably died ten or twenty years ago? Or at least as long ago as when they still developed film on Kodak paper?

Ancestry.com lets you track your family tree of humans so we can remember people we never met but who were part of our family. Why don’t they have a pet version so we can gaze back over our lives and remember all of the wonderful animals that we have loved and who have loved us unconditionally in return? Will someone please invent that for me? I would include all of the pets I have lived with in my life, and believe me, it’s quite a few.

In the meantime, the picture of The Beloved Dog will sit next to my Big Black Dog Studio sign as a shrine to beloved pets everywhere that enrich our lives for a time, but who pass on and often get forgotten as time rolls on. That seems to me to just be not right. Our pets help make us who we are just as much (and sometimes more) than the people in our lives. I personally think that we learn much more about ourselves reflected through our pets than we even know.

All of my pets have always been rescues, so I adopted poor, cast-off Beloved in spirit, and he can watch over Nemo like an adopted ancestor, one beloved Big Black Dog to another. I don’t need to know the specifics of Lovey’s life; all that’s important for me to know is that he once meant a lot to someone, so therefore, he now means a lot to me.